big40fella wrote:My name is Evan, I live in Melbourne Australia (originally a country boy). My wife is Thai (Sisaket) and we have been married for 3 years.

And the even better news is that cigarettes are relatively cheap and there are decent plonk shops in supermarkets.Food might be an issue if you don't like chilli in everything including sweet and sour. Water is not an issue and at the moment there is an over-abundance in about 17 provinces, so build up. Good luck, you'll adapt well to the climate. Like moving to Darwin from Melbourne.

Roger Ramjet wrote:And the even better news is that cigarettes are relatively cheap and there are decent plonk shops in supermarkets.Food might be an issue if you don't like chilli in everything including sweet and sour. Water is not an issue and at the moment there is an over-abundance in about 17 provinces, so build up. Good luck, you'll adapt well to the climate. Like moving to Darwin from Melbourne.

Hi RR,

I don't smoke, I vape........so you can imagine my heartache learning of Thailands stance on vapers! Phet mak mak isn't an issue, just not keen on the asshole or lips of any animal in my food. My physique is similar to Buddha, so it takes me a little longer to get acclimatised than the average guy. That said I'm all in for retiring in LoS when the time comes

With the medical findings coming to light now it looks as if vaping could turn out to be significantly worse than cigarettes. So the Thai attitude could turn out to be a blessing in disguise.

I'm a vaper as well. Smoked for 20+ years, quit for 6, then on a holiday to (where else) Thailand 4 years ago my friend (who has no issue having one cigarette in 3 months) decides it time we have one. By the time I got to Bangkok to depart I was back on a pack a day. One of my former employees vaped and suggested I try it.

Doubt anyone can speak with much authority on the worst of two evils, but from my standpoint it doesn't leave me with ashtray mouth and I do not wake up in the morning hacking all over. Factually, I have seen little evidence (via scientific studies) that put vaping up there with cigarettes, time will tell. I do find it amazing that Thailand (I assume via some decent lobbying from the Thailand Tobacco Company) has made vaping illegal while now considering decriminalizing Yaba. One has to wonder...

kmanonmaui wrote:Doubt anyone can speak with much authority on the worst of two evils, but from my standpoint it doesn't leave me with ashtray mouth and I do not wake up in the morning hacking all over. Factually, I have seen little evidence (via scientific studies) that put vaping up there with cigarettes, time will tell. I do find it amazing that Thailand (I assume via some decent lobbying from the Thailand Tobacco Company) has made vaping illegal while now considering decriminalizing Yaba. One has to wonder...

Being an ardent reader of all things scientific I cannot recall any peer reviewed studies from scientific journals on vaping.In fact the latest study coming out of the University of Sydney involving plaque build-up and heart attacks finds just the opposite. So far the study has just included 20,000 people nation wide and when concluded will include over 200,000 people. The findings are the exact opposite to what the doctors and scientists wanted to find (cigarette smoking, alcohol, lack of activity, red meat, dairy products, fatty foods and oils) were all involved and treated as the "bad guys" at the start of the study, but proved not to be a factor at all. They actually found that more active people, with balanced diets were at 3-5 times greater risk of heart attacks and plaque build-up in the arteries than those evil smokers and drinkers with only 1/10th the study completed.The study is of people who have either suffered heart attacks or people who have had to have operations to avoid heart attacks or future heart attacks and their lifestyles. The study has destroyed all those mythical ones the government paid for so they could increase taxes on the evil things humans do.They even destroyed the myth that passive smokers were at greater risk because of smokers. I can recall the venomous anti smoking lobby having many victories in the past and they even wanted this study banned, (along with the pollies), but fortunately it is not a government funded study, but a collection of data over the last 40 years by linking university hospitals, public and private hospitals computers and the data they stored on operations and questionnaires answered at the time, with follow up questionnaires that are still coming back in.The conclusion so far is to do with the genetic make-up of the person. They hope to be able to predict who will be at greater risk of plaque build-up and heart attacks soon by studying those at greater genetic risk. So far the first part of the study has been peer reviewed and printed in JAMA and other medical journals. The study itself is causing a lot of people to have heart attacks, especially the politicians and their tax increases because they are looking down the barrel of their biggest "funding" from the taxpayer. http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-08-29/h ... rs/8849008

Sometimewoodworker wrote:With the medical findings coming to light now it looks as if vaping could turn out to be significantly worse than cigarettes. So the Thai attitude could turn out to be a blessing in disguise.

Hi Sometimewoodworker,

I'm not as well read as RR, but I do a little bit of research for personal understanding.

I believe the Thai Government banned vaping due to the Diacetyl in some flavourings. Diacetyl is found in a lot of food products and has been tested for oral consumption. It was found safe in small quantities (cannot remember amounts) for oral ingestion. There have been no tests for ingestion through vapour at this point in time.

I buy quality base and flavourings that the seller can provide food grade test certificates for, my nicotine is steam distilled and comes with a certificate as I mix my own. Sure you can go to the local markets and get it half price (made in China), this stuff I wouldn't touch at all.

The Australian government haven't worked out how to tax e-juice/nicotine yet, therefor it is illegal to buy e-juice with nicotine already added.......but the markets sell it "nic'd up" so people jump on it at a cheap price.

I personally feel healthier vaping, so does my wallet! I spend a quarter to a third of what I used to on cigarettes. I too don't smell or taste like an ashtray and I'm happy with that and my choice to vape. I just wish the "fun police" would stop stealing the jam out of my donut.

big40fella wrote:I believe the Thai Government banned vaping due to the Diacetyl in some flavourings. Diacetyl is found in a lot of food products and has been tested for oral consumption. It was found safe in small quantities (cannot remember amounts) for oral ingestion. There have been no tests for ingestion through vapour at this point in time.

Evan,You might like to also have a look at what NIOSH found: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DiacetylBut as Diacetyl is a natural occurring chemical found in nature, some white wines, margarine, beer (English hot beer LOL) during the fermentation process, the Aussie pollies are a bit stumped on how they can tax nature, let alone the margarine they so carefully promoted as a healthy alternative to butter during the 60-70s and now have managed to have milk taken off the school kids list of "healthy food" (to save us taxpayers mind you) even though all the real studies found it did 10 times more good than harm and it was only the lactose intolerant kids that couldn't drink it.....and they certainly wouldn't drink soy milk if they knew what was in it, but that's our pollies for you, listening to all the minorities and never the majority and always looking for a way to raise the taxes on the little bloke so that Gina Rinehart can make $40,000 donations to Kiwi's to get them back into parliament. As a three pack a day man I just smile at the girls in 7/11 when I go and pick-up my cartoons each fortnight that are a 1/4 the price of Aussie smokes and I wonder how the Aussie Government of the day can explain that soldiers serving overseas only pay 15 cents a packet (used to be 10 cents during Vietnam) and beer the same price.....and still make a profit through their middleman (Australian Services Canteen Organisation).Stick with your vaping mate, even though the Thai government is trying to ban it entirely, including the use of hookahs, that Thai teens are currently using. There will always be a grey market in Thailand, where you can buy anything.

The vapingpost website is not independent and will probably not highlight the articles or research that has a rather different view.

The problem is that vaping is so new that the long term studies that are needed haven't been done as there hasn't been time enough.

The information that I've got so far is that while the individual components may have been tested as safe virtually none of them have been extensively tested as inhaled mist and that preliminary study results are somewhere between not good and very bad.

I am not saying that you should not use the system as an alternative to smoking, but one of the reasons that it isn't great and is being banned is that it is another way to get young people addicted to a drug that has no benefits.

Sometimewoodworker wrote:I am not saying that you should not use the system as an alternative to smoking, but one of the reasons that it isn't great and is being banned is that it is another way to get young people addicted to a drug that has no benefits.

I can recall those exact same words by politicians in Australia when talking about marijuana and the doctors saying they had no idea what it did or whether it caused problems or not.The only way that a study (peer reviewed) can have any significance (more likely than not is not good enough) is by doing an extensive study over years so it has a statistical value. And the sponsors of the study must have credibility, which government sponsored studies do not have.I recall a Royal Commissioner Justice Philip Evatt calling Agent Orange safe to use and just a storm in a teacup. The fact that he had plagiarised 187 pages from Monsanto's final submission and had not followed the Letter's Patent issued by the Governor General : Where he was to find the "evidence", (big word that), when in actual fact he ignored the evidence presented by the independent scientists, ignored the evidence presented by the veterans and followed instructions issued by the government in ignoring 2,3,7,8-Tetrachlorodibenzo-p-dioxin (TCDD) and 2,4-D and the way they were made at that time by Monsanto, Dow, Nufarm and ICI and the impurities that slipped passed the quality controllers (there were none) made a mockery of previous and future Royal Commissions.When a journalist and a couple of veterans can find 10,000 pages of HERBS Tapes hidden away in the archives, filed under enemy activity, that confirmed the vast quantities used, the toxicity and the cover-ups by both producers and governments, it just shows that government funded studies cannot be trusted, let alone Royal Commissioners, but all too late for the veterans to benefit.The fact that the study I posted deals with plaque build-up and heart attacks done by the University of Sydney exonerates cigarettes, fitness, beer, exercise, etc etc should be enough for governments to stop acting as revenue collectors and alarmists and to stick with proper studies (peer reviewed, non government sponsored).Big business and governments are hand in foot with each other and it's about time we put a stop to it.Nature throws enough nasties at us (cancer etc) and we should have concentrated all our scientific power at curing/fixing them, instead we have taxes. As Scrooge would say: Bah Humbug.

Sometimewoodworker wrote:None of those articles are from an unbiased source are they?

Never tried to imply they were, however the source referenced scientific studies (all be it for their own biased benefit) which I do see as a reasonable contradiction to your post about recent studies showing vaping is as bad or worse than cigarettes. That was the only purpose of my posting, nothing more. I am quite sure that vaping is not "good" for you, but I also will not go as far as thinking it is nearly as bad as cigarettes based upon personal experience and barring evidence otherwise.